How old were you

[Kyra]

My earliest recollection was just before entering Elementary school. So I chose the 6-7 yr category. I can't be more specific than that. I do, vividly, remember the first thing I tried on and the feelings associated with that moment. They were mom's nylons hanging in the bathroom after she'd washed them. The feeling was Electric! It felt magical. As if it awakened some part of me that, until then, didn't exist. It sounds almost fiction like, but it's true. I don't remember how long it took to progress to dresses and makeup, but I'm certain of this: It was inevitable. Had I not done so at the early age of 7, it would have happened at some point in my childhood or teen years. It's part of who I am.

[Carolynn]

Thanks for joining in Kyra. The numbers are mounting, slowly but surely, but the percentages are staying about the same.. The TS peaks are still a few years earlier, but still not certain what that means. For some it is a first time dressing, even if just a bit, and for others it is when they knew they just were not little boys as people were telling them.

Curious, no?

[Ms Denier]

Hard poll to place one age on it for me.

At age 6 after school I would stay over the neighbors house until my mother picked me up after working. They had two girls that went to an all girls school and wore tights with their uniform. I would have to change out of my school clothes into my after school clothes. During my changing I would be alone in one of the girls bedroom and always quickly slip on a pair of her tights just to feel and see how they looked on me. So I guess that counts as my first exploring but it was not yet sexual in any way or at least I don't think...

But at the age of 12 I was just struggling with deep fetish passion already for my mothers nylon stockings, garters and high heels. An at that age it was pure sexual excitement.

That was also the first time I was ever able to stay home all alone not feeling well for school. Till this day I still never forget that incredible rush of anticipation waiting for everyone to leave the house and finally being all alone. When I heard the garage door close and my mother drive off to work I was literally shaking with excitement as I entered my mothers bedroom, and my heart pounding so hard in my chest I could hardly catch my breath. It was not long I was finally standing in front of my mothers full-length mirror and seeing my reflection....Ultra sheer long RHT nylons, open bottom girdle and her highest stiletto heels she owned. An incredible day of pure fetish bliss which really started it all for me.

So yes a about 6 I was already exploring but not till i was 12 do I really connect my start of cross dressing as it turned form just curious and exploring, to fetish need and want.

[Latanya]

somewhere around 11-12
locked myself in the bathroom parents away and tried on my moms panties, bra, stocking girdle with garters and i was hooked!

[Cassandra Lynn]

5ish for me, and it was my mom's things too as i didn't have a sister.

I remember being in the first grade and being so jealous of all the little girls in their pretty dresses.

[Robyn Katie]

Age 7 or 8 for me. I've noted this on a previous thread I think, but for context:

I remember two "beginnings." One, I snuck bras, panties and slips from my mother's bureau drawer and tried them on when nobody else was home. I can still remember the head-spinning excitement ...

Second, my aunt Jeanie who was only a year and a half older and lived across the road had a big chest of her mom's discarded dresses, shoes, hats, gloves, etc., and dragooned two or three of us boys into dressing up in them with her. As I recall we were reluctant ("Naaah...!") but Jeanie was forceful, kind of like Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon strip, and tended to get her way.

Of the two, the first was far more exciting with its solitary secrecy and room for oodles of fantasy. The second was dusty, crowded and kind of annoying ... I'm not one of those who finds it sexy being bullied. Nor dressing in company. But both were decisive, it seems.

By the way, Carolynn, I'd add this, as I am fascinated by the on-off periodicity of dressing urges through life. It'd make an interesting graph:

AGE
7-11 First dressing, on and off, with periods during which I would not think about it, nor recall times of doing it, then feel that headlong compulsion again.

12-27 Latency. The urge submerged and so far as I can recall (there may have been short recurrences but I don't remember any) I didn't recall it or think about it. This period lasted from first love for a girl through end of 1st marriage and courtship for second. Then—

28-present. I got an urge to dress again, bough a slip, a bra, panties. Then followed "purchase-and-purge" periods, but from then on I fairly constantly felt the desire to dress, and rarely had an "off" period for long.

I get the impression this pattern—childhood dressing, then latency while in "young manhood" with its overriding concerns and passions during the years of dating and early marriage, followed by resurgence of dressing in the mid to late twenties that lasts the rest of a lifetime—typical of the heterosexual dresser. I'd like to see it broken down even further, to get an idea of the "on-off" pattern in more detail, where our memories permit. I really do think this is one of the prime keys to the dynamic we're all experiencing. For one thing it would be interesting to see what happens to those who lose interest and stop dressing for good. And, conversely, what contrasting dynamic makes the passion of others turn the outward woman self into a life role. And how closely these aspects are linked, or analogous, or not. And so on.

Carolynn, I applaud your probing into this. It jibes with my own curiosity about how this urge works and manifests itself throughout life. Despite the excellent studies already published, I do think "the book" on this has yet to be written. What's missing is the inner dimension. Even studies that publish interviews with TVs, TSs, etc. seem not to get "under the skin" and into the feelings associated with the memories. We all know those feelings are extraordinary, but they're evanescent and unusually difficult to put into word, so we usually don't get the benefit of others' deep-seated knowledge.

Robyn Katie

[Jacqueline Landau]

I put in 12 because I think that it is around that time that my mother put me in my elder sister's room. We slept in twin beds. I was only 12 but I was not stupid. My sister was gorgeous, had well-developped breast, thigs and buttock. Whenever she dressed in the room, that is when I got exposed to her beauty. My therapist later described this as the "guilt desire": I could not have her because we were family. Still, the desire was there and I think it found an outlet in her clothing.

[Laura Michelle]

My oldest memory is of being caught in my mum's tights (pantyhose) when I was 4. Was always sneeking into her drawers after that.

Laura.

[Melinda Welsh]

There are photos at my mothers of me wearing a pink lace christening gown at between six months and a year. by the time I was 5 I had been caught so many times by my parents and grandparents they gave up questioning me about it. With two younger sisters what else can you do but wear their clothes.

[Latanya]

came across a pic when i was young!my mom dressed me and my brother in dresses for a costume party
only thing my mom could come up with since all our cousins were girls! my brother was crying in the picture but i was pretty stoic about it! must have been something brewing way back then(i was 7 at the time) but didnt actually start till i was about twelve!

[Celeste]

Looks like I'm a late bloomer among this crowd...I was fifteen or sixteen the first time I strongly felt the urge to dip into my mother's makeup drawer and try on lipstick. From there, I was hooked. Every time they went out of town, it was time to play. I moved on to nylons next, then panties, and eventually dresses. But for me it always comes back to the makeup. It's the first thing I tried and now I often play around with cosmetics more than any other aspect of dressing -- I only own one pair of shoes, one dress, and some fishnets for now but will soon expand so I don't have to keep sneaking into my wife's closet.

Then again, as uncomfortable as she currently is seeing me en femme, my wife has no problem diving into my makeup collection (which is infinitely larger than hers) whenever she wants to try out a new style.

Reading a lot of your comments makes me wish I had an older sister who dressed me up at a young age so I could have started in on such bliss so much earlier!

[Kelly Blaine]

Well, I did have a problem when I was very young and had issues when I went to sleep with my bladder. All my underwear was gone one time and my mother gave me my sister's panties. I figured it out then.

[Martina H.]

For me as a youngster I always enjoyed shopping with my mother when we went into department stores selling womens clothes and underwear I guess, I loved to feel the softness of the materials while looking around. Not having any sisters and me being the youngest of 4-boys and my mother wanting a girl that she hoped I would have been.
My first trying on womens clothing items came when I was 30 when my wife went shopping I would have a look in her clothes draws and wardrobe and feel the items and want to try them on so a pair of stockings was first that was so good to feel the softness on my legs. Each time she went shopping I would try on her dresses and skirts, I think that from that time on I was hooked into my fem side wanting to come out.